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PrintTulsaPeople Q&A: Stanley Glanz
Tulsa County Sheriff
During the past two decades, the name Stanley Glanz has become synonymous with the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office. Having previously retired as a major after 23 years with the Tulsa Police Department, Glanz was first elected as sheriff in 1989. He was re-elected to his sixth consecutive term in 2008. Now 67, Glanz has won virtually every award known to his profession, including Sheriff of the Year honors from both the Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association in 1996 and the National Sheriffs’ Association in 2000.
Glanz is a major proponent of accreditations, and in 2007 he and his office earned the National Sheriffs’ Association’s Triple Crown Award for achieving simultaneous accreditation from the Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), the American Correctional Association’s Commission on Accreditation for Corrections (CAC) and the National Commission on Correctional Healthcare (NCCH).
Your office brings in extra revenue by participating in the 287(g) program run by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. What does that participation involve?
The 287(g) program was established by Congress and authorizes ICE to deputize local law enforcement to do initial screenings on persons suspected of being in the country illegally. The program gives our employees the ability to check to see if people who are arrested are legal citizens or not. Our participation brings in a lot of revenue to the county for the jail. In fact, without that money, there are things we could not do, such as a much-needed renovation to the jail’s kitchen. In the last year and a half, we brought in an additional $6 million by working with ICE and holding some of their inmates. We do a lot of transportation for them as well.
What do you say to critics who contend you’re targeting people of Latino descent?
We’re looking for criminal enterprises — trafficking, narcotics, fraudulent identifications, counterfeiting. We don’t go out and arrest John Does working as a laborer on a house or on a construction crew. But if you’re arrested in Tulsa County, you are subject to having your country of origin looked at and whether or not you are in the country legally or illegally and what kind of visa you may be on. If a person is here illegally or undocumented, we refer them to ICE, which sends them to a judge who decides what to do with them. We’ve identified more than 8,000 cases, and probably 90 percent of those have been deported.
Let’s say a person is here illegally but is being victimized somehow. Can he or she seek police assistance?
If you are the victim of domestic violence and you’re here illegally, you can come to us and we can offer you assistance to, No. 1, deal with the person creating the violence and, No. 2, to try to find a way to keep you here legally. We do a lot of that and people don’t know it. We can get the victim a visa that allows them to stay while we prosecute the perpetrator. We can also assist them in procuring a work visa, especially if they have kids. When you get a bunch of illegals in a neighborhood, you get an underground culture. They’re afraid of the police, and they’re very vulnerable to victimization. You get all of these people preying on them — stealing their money; if they’re in business, they’re hit with protection rackets. Those are the people we’re keying (in) on to try and take out, the ones preying on the others. If the victims don’t come to us, we can’t do anything for them.
As a member of Oklahoma’s Homeland Security Region 7 Council, what has been your role in homeland security planning and coordinating?
There are eight regions in our state, and ours is Region 7. There are 12 to 15 of us on the council, and we meet and look at vulnerabilities for homeland security. We also work to achieve the eight homeland security priorities — things like expanding regional collaboration and implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS), set by former President (George W.) Bush. The council does the planning for the area, and the Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) is the funding mechanism. UASI has given us about $1.6 million to spend for homeland security missions, and we’re looking at our needs and applying those funds.
You are on record in support of the proposal for a new Tulsa County Juvenile Center. Why do you think a new facility is needed?
The current facility is old, and half of it is in the flood plain and has flooded three or four times. It’s overburdened, and it’s not conducive to doing anything except making kids worse. I think it’s time the community invests some money in the young people. If you don’t fix them when they’re kids, then I deal with them when they’re adults.
What would be the price tag on a new facility?
It’s going to cost between $40 million and $50 million to do it right, but it’s something we really need. I work with kids, and we have these kids in gangs, and we need a place to intervene, and the place we take them is not beneficial. It’s really degrading to work out there, much less to be taken out there to be dealt with as a juvenile. They do a wonderful job with what they do. In the past, they had a less than 10 percent recidivism rate out there. Think if we had a good facility to put these kids in and deal with them.
The city has been struggling with budgetary concerns. What has been the impact of the Tulsa Police Department layoffs on your office and personnel?
Whenever they have a need, we go and help them. Sometimes they run out of cars and call us and we’ll make calls for them. The Sheriff’s Office is responsible for the whole county. Everyone in Tulsa County pays taxes to fund my office. If you are a citizen of Tulsa County and you call, we’re going to respond to you. You should first call your police department, but if they’re busy, then you can call us. If they can’t do an investigation, then we’ll do it for you. I have a lot of reserves — retired law enforcement folks and former businesspeople who give their time to do investigations. The dedication of some of these people is unbelievable. I see the Sheriff’s Office as the big picture working to facilitate local law enforcement.
